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SANDY SBA
DISASTER LOANS

The U.S. Small Business Administration has approved close to $200 million in disaster loans to New Jersey homeowners and business owners, the bulk of whom are in Monmouth and Ocean counties, the agency said Tuesday.

The money, however, is unlikely to hit the streets — and the economy — quickly. Many borrowers are waiting on new standards from their municipalities that will determine how they need to rebuild.

“The actual amount dispersed is probably much less because (many) people can’t start building yet,” said R. Gary Colton, a spokesman for the SBA’s disaster loan program “But people know they have that amount available to them.”

The SBA program offers low-interest loans to residents and business owners whose property was damaged by superstorm Sandy.

Homeowners can receive up to $200,000 at an interest rate as low as 1.69 percent to repair or replace real estate. Business owners can receive up to $2 million for as low as 4 percent to repair or replace real estate, inventory, machinery and other physical losses.

As of Tuesday, the SBA had approved $92.1 million in loans to 1,110 borrowers in Ocean County and $58.8 million in loans to 747 borrowers in Monmouth County, accounting for more than three-quarters of the state’s total, Colton said.

The actual dispersal of the money could take time. The SBA approved $9.7 billion in disaster loans to homeowners and business owners after the three Gulf Coast hurricanes in 2005 — Katrina, Rita and Wilma. But it had dispersed just 14 percent of the money nine months later, according to a report by the SBA’s Office of Inspector General in 2006.

Still, SBA officials have encouraged residents to sign up with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to learn about different types of financial assistance that’s available. The deadline to apply for a disaster loan to repair physical damage is Jan. 30. For more information, they can call the program’s customer service center at 800-659-2955.

More than two months after Sandy, no one knows the answer to perhaps the biggest question: Can home and business owners cobble together enough money – from the federal government, banks and insurance – to rebuild?

Rhoda Millroy, 59, provides an example. She wants to rebuild her home in the Beach Haven West section of Stafford, which took on as much as six feet of water during the storm.

She said she received $1,370 from her homeowner’s insurance company to fix the aluminum siding, window, roof and skylight that was damaged by the wind. She applied for a loan from the SBA, which referred her to FEMA’s grant program instead. And now she’s waiting to see how much she receives in grants and flood insurance payments from FEMA.

“Every day I am hoping to hear something, but meantime I’ve still got to carry on paying for a house I can’t use and appliances I can’t use, because I had brand new appliances and they’re shot,” Millroy said. “I’m just going about paying for what I’ve got to pay.”